Saturday, January 31, 2015

It is well known that consuming protein stimulates the body's cells to build protein. However, getting older combined with eating less protein can lead to a decline in the body's muscle-building efficiency. Maintaining and building muscle is especially important for older individuals. Increased muscle mass can contribute to a healthier weight, better fitness and an improved quality of life. New research explores whether the amount and timing of protein consumption make a difference in the body's net protein gains. Current US recommendations for daily dietary protein intake are 0.8 grams/kilogram of body weight (roughly 62 grams of protein per day for a 170-pound person). Previous research has shown that older adults need a protein intake of at least 0.40 g/kg of body weight at each meal (roughly 31 grams of protein per meal or 93 grams per day for a 170-pound person) to encourage maximum protein synthesis. This represents a significantly higher amount of protein than the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) suggests. Researchers at the Center for Translational Research in Aging and Longevity at the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences set out to measure whether daily protein intake greater than the average American adult consumption leads to a greater net protein gain in older adults. They also examined whether the timing of protein intake made a difference in protein synthesis - the process by which cells make protein - and net protein gains. The research team studied 20 healthy adults between 52-75 years of age, randomly assigning them to one of four groups over a four-day test period. Two groups ate the RDA of 0.8 g/kg per day of protein: one group had even protein distribution across meals (33% of total protein at breakfast, lunch and dinner) and the other had an uneven protein distribution at meals (15% at breakfast, 20% at lunch and 65% at dinner). The other two groups ate double the RDA (1.5 g/kg day of protein) following the same even and uneven protein distribution patterns as the first two groups. The group that consumed double the RDA was supplemented with a pre-weighed milk protein concentrate (equal parts whey and casein) to ensure that they achieved daily protein goals of 1.5 g/kg day. All meals were prepared in the Metabolic Kitchen at University of Arkansas Translational Research Institute. The subjects recorded time and other details about the food they ate. The research team found that while the distribution of protein across meals did not make a significant impact, total amount of protein consumed did. "Although there was no clear effect of the pattern of protein intake in our study, we observed a definitive effect of a higher amount of protein intake in mixed meals on whole body net protein balance and muscle protein synthesis," the authors wrote. "Whole body net protein balance was greater with protein intake above recommended dietary allowance." Research also shows that added sugars, particularly those containing fructose, are a principal driver of diabetes and pre-diabetes, even more so than other carbohydrates.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Instead, the United States ranked only 12th - after Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Canada, Chile, Estonia, Ireland, Mauritius, and Denmark. The Index rates economic freedom for countries on 10 quantitative and qualitative factors that are based on four pillars of freedom: rule of law, limited government, regulatory efficiency and open markets. When Obama took office in 2009, the United States ranked sixth for economic freedom. Now in 2015, the United States has fallen by six to 12th place. “The anemic post-recession recovery has been characterized by slow growth, high unemployment, a decrease in the number of Americans seeking work, and great uncertainty that has held back investment,” explains the report. “Increased tax regulatory burdens, aggravated by favoritism toward entrenched interests, have undercut America’s historically dynamic entrepreneurial growth.”

And it’s often not genes, but the how-to instructions for using those genes that are most important. Those findings emerged from a new method of analyzing how natural selection has tinkered with the genome since humans split from chimpanzees. “Remarkably we use nearly the same building blocks as chimpanzees, but we end up with very different results,” says Brad Gulko, a computer scientist at Cornell University. Previously, researchers have mostly looked for evolutionary clues in protein-producing genes because proteins do much of the important work in cells and organisms. Altering a protein may change the way an organism looks or acts. But mutations that alter proteins often are devastating to an organism and therefore aren’t passed on to offspring. Gulko and colleagues found that only 9% of the DNA that got evolution’s attention resides in protein-coding parts of the genome that are shared with other species. About 52% of the places showing signs of natural selection were in intergenic regions, the stretches of DNA between genes. Another 35% were in introns — spacer DNA found within genes but not involved in encoding proteins. Both intergenic regions and introns often contain DNA responsible for controlling gene activity. These findings suggest that human evolution works mostly through changes in how genes are used, rather than by altering genes and the proteins they encode.

Sunday, January 25, 2015

The CDC’s Abortion Surveillance Report for 2011 shows that 117,293 black babies were aborted that year in the 32 states and the District of Columbia that report abortion numbers to the CDC. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2011, shows that 6,329 blacks were murder victims that year (5,416 males, 910 females, and 3 unknown gender). In other words, for every black American killed by homicide in 2011, there were 19 (18.5) blacks killed by abortion - and that’s just in the jurisdictions that report their abortion data.

The murder rate among African-Americans has receded in recent years: In 2010, it was 32 per 100,000 people — half the rate of 1990, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But it remains much higher than for other groups. The homicide mortality rate in 2010 for black men between 25 and 34 was about 15 times the rate for white men of the same age. This racial disparity isn’t new. Historians such as Eric H. Monkkonen of the University of California, Los Angeles, have traced disproportionate black murder rates to the late 19th century, with the gap widening in the 20th. Annual reports by the Los Angeles police from the early 1940s show that even when blacks were just 5% of the city’s population, they accounted for 21% of its homicide victims. There is no mystery in the fact that black people are most likely to be killed by other black people: Homicide tends to occur mostly within groups, no matter the race.

One of the Latino suspects got out of the vehicle and punched the black victim in the face, causing him to fall backward and lose consciousness, deputies said. He was treated at a hospital. The trio fled, and now authorities want to talk to these Hispanic men about what could be a double hate crime and an assault.

About 81% of Germans say that they want to put "the history of the persecution of the Jews behind them" and for their leaders to turn to contemporary problems. The study entitled "Connecting past, separating present" was conducted by the Bertelsmann Foundation to gauge current German-Israeli relations. It also showed that almost half of modern day Germans - 48% - have a bad opinion about Israel, 36% a good one. Pollsters said that the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict greatly determines German perceptions of Israel. In Germany, 68% want their lawmakers to stop weapons exports to Tel Aviv. In 2014, a submarine costing half a billion pounds was delivered to the Israeli navy.

Friday, January 23, 2015

Manchester police say that the uncle, 25-year-old Giobari Atura, told them that he would stop by every couple of days to drop off food, but when police got involved in November 2014, they found no edible food in the refrigerator and only ramen noodles in a cabinet. Atura was charged in December 2014 with one count of endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor. He was freed on $500 bail. Atura's older brother, Jerusalem Monday, left for Nigeria with his wife and three of their children in July 2014, intending to return in August 2014. They told police that they were delayed by illness and passport problems. The case came to light when officials at the boys' school told the state Division of Children, Youth, and Families that the twins had been living on their own. The boys were taken into protective custody and then placed into foster care, though they're now back with their parents. A Hillsborough County attorney said that the parents returned home shortly after they learned the boys were being left alone. Because they left them in the care of a relative, he said, they won't be charged. In a police affidavit, Atura said that he told the boys to call him if they needed anything. "It should be noted that no operable phone was located within the apartment," the affidavit says. The twins' parents said that they had instructed Atura to stay at the apartment, and if he couldn't, they gave him the name of a family friend to contact. The parents said that they stayed in phone contact with Atura, who assured them everything was fine.

That is more than four times as high as any other country. Crucially, post-1965 immigration has been concentrated among less-skilled, less-educated workers. From 1980 to 1995, immigration increased the number of college graduates in the American work force by 4% while increasing the number of workers without high-school diplomas by 21%.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Sheldon Silver, among the two or three most powerful men in state politics since 1994, surrendered to FBI agents at a federal building in Foley Square, just blocks from the Lower East Side district he dominated for decades. A New York State Assembly member from the Lower East Side since 1977, Silver has been the speaker of the assembly since 1994. Silver’s fall, on what are expected to be corruption charges related to undisclosed payments from a law firm, comes as the Lower East Side old boys network he ruled continues to self-immolate. Silver was a member of a tight-knit coterie of Jewish political operators who came up together in the co-op developments on Grand Street. Many had working class roots, belonged to the Bialystoker Synagogue on Willett Street, and developed power together through the same few Jewish institutions. Now, that Lower East Side crew is falling to pieces. William Rapfogel, Silver’s close ally, is in state prison after pleading guilty to embezzling millions as an executive director of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. Silver was a key benefactor of the Met Council, and William Rapfogel’s wife Judy is Silver’s chief of staff. Heshy Jacob, the traditional third member of Rapfogel and Silver’s Lower East Side power troika, was traveling in Israel and said that he was unaware of Silver’s arrest when reached via telephone. Speaking about the roles he, Rapfogel and Silver played on the Lower East Side, Jacob was forthright about the old guard’s power: ““We put in time and effort for the people,” Jacob said at the time. “It’s not that we simply are despots.” That power is now evaporating, as is the influence it wielded in Albany. The U.S. Attorney’s charges against Silver will relate to payments from a law firm called Goldberg & Iryami that specializes in tax certioari. Jay Arthur Goldberg, who leads the firm, grew up on the Lower East Side with Silver. His firm represents the Grand Street co-op buildings where Silver and Rapfogel lived. Some of those buildings are managed by Jacob.

Why? Dorian Walker-Gaines, 20, and Dillian Thompson, 22, are accused of stealing an iPad, $5,000 in cash, a laptop, and other stuff from a parked vehicle, then posing for a series of celebratory selfies that got uploaded to the rightful owner's iCloud account. In one image, the two are seen holding $100 bills in a nearby Burger King. “This, my good people, is what we get from a good night’s hustle," said Walker-Gaines in a video he posted on Facebook. Owner Stewart Schaefer noticed the images in his iCloud account, shared them online, and the Internet took care of the rest. After a Reddit user recognized the black men and passed along their identities, police arrested them.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Foreign-born Hispanics who are in the United States illegally are disproportionately male. African-Americans who have not pursued education beyond high school are also disproportionately male. These poor educational attainment levels usually relegate both African-American men and illegal immigrant men to the same low-skilled labor market, where they must compete against each other for work. Not only do illegal immigrants compete for jobs with African-Americans, but that competition drives down wages for the jobs that are available. Immigration, both legal and illegal, has resulted in a disproportionately large increase in the number of high school dropouts in the labor pool. This has caused a drop in wages among the poorest and least-educated members of the workforce. These people are disproportionately likely to be African-American men. The consequences of illegal immigration for black men and the black community in general are not limited to wages. Lower wages and fewer jobs also correlate with an increase in the black incarceration rate.

At Fox: 21% of characters in lead or supporting roles were black this past fall, a number that notched up again with January 2015's premiere of "Empire," a drama about an African-American family's music dynasty. Other ethnic groups don't do nearly as well. While Latinos are the nation's largest minority group at more than 17% of the population, only Fox and ABC have Latino representation of as much as 10%.

I have been asked to post a notice on my blog of the following new YouTube video from the C.S. Lewis Society of California of David J. Theroux's keynote talk at the first annual conference of Christians for Liberty, that was held at St. Edwards University in San Antonio, TX, August 2, 2014.

New advances in the technology mean that detectives will know if an offender is black or white, the color of their hair and eyes, their height and age – even if there are no witnesses to the crime. Until now, investigators have only been able to match genetic material to records of criminals already in the national database, but the innovation will produce a "DNA photofit" describing the offender. Dr Denise Syndercombe-Court, a forensic genetics expert at King's College London, said: "The new technologies raise the possibility that we won't need an actual eyewitness to a crime in order to produce a picture of how the suspect looks. Instead, investigators will be able to generate a DNA photo detailing a suspect's characteristics, biological age and geographical ancestry." She said that the value to police is enormous in narrowing down the pool of suspects and eliminating the innocent. "We are now in the moment of glimpsing a brilliant new future of DNA analysis," she added. The breakthrough comes thanks to the Human Genome Project, which identified all the genes in human DNA, meaning that scientists can single out the sequences that determine individual characteristics. Academics and private companies are now developing tests that focus on individual areas such as eye color. In the past year, King's College London, working with the Metropolitan Police, has helped on a handful of criminal cases to identify the geographical background of suspects based on DNA samples. They are currently achieving success rates of more than 85%.

Findings indicate that the risk for death among white patients is much lower than in black and Native American SLE patients. Patients with lupus have an overactive immune system that attacks their healthy joints and organs. Previous studies report that lupus is disproportionately higher among non-white populations in the United States. In fact, evidence shows incidence of lupus is as much as four times higher in black compared to white females. Blacks, Hispanics and Asians with lupus have higher rates of lupus nephritis, end-stage renal disease and organ damage according to prior research. The racial/ethnic breakdown of patients with lupus or lupus nephritis in the current study was 40% black, 38% white, 15% Hispanic, 5% Asian, and 2% Native American. The annual mortality rate for those with lupus per 1,000 person-years was highest in Native Americans (27.52), blacks (24.13), and whites (20.17). Hispanic and Asian lupus patients had lower mortality than black, white, or Native American patients even after adjusting for demographic and clinical factors.

I have always believed that one of the world's greatest problems is that we have far too many wealthy Jews. The world would be a much better place if our governments did everything they could to turn rich Jews into poor ones.

Being an intelligent people the Chinese realize that only fools pander to Muslims. While Europeans want to bow down before their new Muslim masters, the Chinese actually want to preserve their civilization.

Similarly, 7 out of 10 burglaries, assaults, and violent thefts in France are committed by first- or second-generation immigrants. Most of these perpetrators seem to be Muslim, although a third of them may be West Indians, Africans, and Roma of nominally Christian background. Muslims seem to be especially over-represented in serious violent crimes that lead to prison sentences. Similar trends are developing elsewhere. Muslims make up 70% all prison inmates in Spain and 45% in Belgium. A Danish researcher has studied the relationship between criminality and immigrant origin in Denmark, Norway, and Finland. He found that the prevalence of Islam in the immigrants’ home country was the single best predictor of criminality both for “all crime” and for “violent crime,” being better than the home country’s mean IQ or GDP per capita and much better than its murder rate.

Lee Daniels made the claims while promoting his new TV show Empire – which features a storyline involving a black father who rejects his gay son.
The showrunner – who is gay – said: “What we’re trying to do is to give people the opportunity to see that what they’re doing is painful. When I did "Precious" I had to do research on AIDS in the 1980s, so I went to the Gay Men’s Health Crisis Center in New York City, and I expected to see gay men, and there were nothing but African American women and babies with HIV. And that blew me away. Homophobia is rampant in the African American community, and men are on the DL. They don’t come out, because your priest says, your pastor says, mama says, your next-door neighbor says, your homie says, your brother says, your boss says [it’s wrong]. And they are killing African American women. They are killing our women. So I wanted to blow the lid off more on homophobia in my community.”

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Most Muslims come from a world in which Islamic law dominates their countries and through its special place proclaims the superiority of Islam to all other religions. A country with a Muslim majority will sooner or later become a theocracy.

Friday, January 16, 2015

In 2012, there were just over 1,900 immigrants to Israel from France. The following year nearly 3,400 "French" Jews emigrated; in 2014 approximately 7,000 left. For the first time ever, France heads the list of countries of origin for immigrants to Israel, and the ministry of immigration absorption expects another 10,000 "French" Jews to arrive in 2015. That would mean more than 22,000 Jews fleeing France for Israel in the space of just four years, nearly 4.5% of the country’s Jewish population. The departure of 100,000 "French" Jews might once have been inconceivable. No longer. In a 2014 survey of France’s Jewish community, the largest in Europe, three out of four respondents said that they were considering emigrating.

Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, a Burmese woman who resided in Saudi Arabia, was executed by sword after being dragged through the street and held down by four police officers. She was convicted of the sexual abuse and murder of her seven-year-old step-daughter. A video showed how it took three blows to complete the execution, while the woman screamed “I did not kill. I did not kill.” It has now been removed by YouTube as part of its policy on “shocking and disgusting content”. There are two ways to behead people according to Mohammed al-Saeedi, a human rights activist: “One way is to inject the prisoner with painkillers to numb the pain and the other is without the painkiller,” he said. “This woman was beheaded without painkillers – they wanted to make the pain more powerful for her.” The Saudi Ministry of the Interior said in a statement that it believed the sentence was warranted due to the severity of the crime. The beheading is part of an alarming trend, which has seen the kingdom execute seven people in the first two weeks of 2015. In 2014 the number of executions rose to 87, from 78 in 2013. Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger, was due to receive the second set of 50 lashes today for insulting Islam, but it has been postponed on medical grounds. Ali A Rizvi, one of the blogger's best best friends said: "His wife told me that the lashings have been postponed, but it is only temporary." He was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison after creating a liberal, secular website, Free Saudi Liberals. He faces lashings every Friday for the next 18 weeks, until the sentence is completed. He narrowly avoided the death penalty when a court threw out apostasy charges in 2013. Sarah Leah Wilson, the Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said: “Corporal punishment is nothing new in Saudi Arabia, but publicly lashing a peaceful activist merely for expressing his ideas sends an ugly message of intolerance. Saudi Arabia is showing a willingness to inflict vicious and cruel punishments on writers whose views it rejects.” Amnesty also condemned the sentence and has launched a campaign to release the blogger. In Saudi Arabia a number of crimes, including murder, rape, adultery and armed robbery, can carry a capital sentence. Beheading is considered one of the more humane punishments the authorities can mete out, a firing squad and stoning are other methods open to judges.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

A new study demonstrates how this gene mutation impairs the heart's ability to pump blood. Results could point the way to eventual treatments and prevention strategies for an estimated 55 million people of South Asian descent worldwide, including 200,000 people in the United States, who carry the potentially fatal mutation. The study was led by Sakthivel Sadayappan, PhD, MBA, of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. The mutation causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the most common form of inherited cardiac disease and the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young people. Previous studies by Dr. Sadayappan and other researchers have found that between 5% and 8% of South Asians carry the mutation. Carriers have about an 80% chance of developing heart failure after age 45. Dr. Sadayappan first reported the mutation in 2001 at the World Congress of the International Society for Heart Research, and has been studying it ever since. He said that, based on a report from one of his collaborators, the mutation likely arose in a single person roughly 33,000 to 55,000 years ago. The mutation then spread throughout South Asia.
The mutated gene encodes for a protein, called cardiac myosin binding protein-C (cMyBP-C), that controls cardiac muscle contractions and is critical for the normal functioning of the heart. In the mutated gene, 25 base pairs (DNA letters) are missing. As a result, the tail end of the protein is altered. In his new study, Dr. Sadayappan and colleagues introduced the mutated gene into adult rat cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells) in a petri dish. These cells were compared with cardiomyocytes that received a normal gene. In cells with the mutant gene, the cMyBP-C protein was not incorporated into sarcomeres, the basic units of heart muscle. So rather than helping the sarcomeres contract properly, the mutant protein floated around the cell's cytoplasm, producing a toxic effect. The study showed, for the first time, that expression of the mutant protein is sufficient to cause cardiac dysfunction.

Raif Badawi got his first 50 lashes recently, and he will continue to get 50 each Friday until he reaches a grand total of 1,000 — unless Saudi Arabia backs down amid a growing international outcry. The flogging is in addition to his 10-year prison sentence and a fine equivalent to about $250,000. All that for creating a now-defunct blog called Free Saudi Liberals to debate political and social issues. “Raif told me he is in a lot of pain after his flogging — his health is poor and I’m certain he will not be able to cope with another round of lashes,” his wife tells Amnesty International. The human rights group is trying raise pressure on the Saudi government, which recently was on the other side of the free-speech debate when it condemned the murder of the Charlie Hebdo editors, also accused of insulting Islam. In fact, at a Paris rally, one woman borrowed the sentiment of "I am Charlie" and held a sign reading, "I am Raif Badawi."

Dieudonne (known in France by his first name) has been taken into police custody in the wake of the now-deleted post he wrote after attending the recent unity and free-speech rally in Paris. It read, "Tonight, as far as I’m concerned, I feel like Charlie Coulibaly," making reference to both Islamic killer Amedy Coulibaly and the "Je Suis Charlie" ("I Am Charlie") phrase of support for Charlie Hebdo that's been circulating worldwide. Dieudonne is no stranger to French authorities. He's been called anti-Semitic for popularizing a Nazi-like salute, joking about the Holocaust, and poking fun of Jewish leaders in France. But his arrest brings up an inevitable debate: how a country that's taken to the streets to advocate for free speech may be trying to keep a lid on his. France doesn't enjoy the same free-speech liberties that the United States does — denying the Holocaust is illegal, for example, and more than 50 hate-speech investigations have opened since the attacks — but Dieudonne's lawyer says that this arrest was "totally exaggerated and [disproportionate]." The black comic himself said: "Whenever I express myself some people will not even try to understand me, they will not listen. ... I am looked upon as if I were Amedy Coulibaly, when I am no different from Charlie."

Sheikh Mohammed Saleh al-Munajjid said "it is not permitted to make a statue out of snow, even by way of play and fun" because creating an image of a human being is sinful. "God has given people space to make whatever they want which does not have a soul, including trees, ships, fruits, buildings, and so on," the cleric said.

Compared to black women, non-Hispanic white women were more likely to be diagnosed when their breast cancer was at an early stage, the research showed. And black women had a higher risk of dying from their breast cancer, compared to white women. The study team thinks that these disparities are due to "a combination of biology and other factors that warrant further investigation to improve survival of all women,” said Dr. Ophira Ginsburg, one of the study’s authors from the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. The researchers found that women diagnosed with early invasive breast cancer – known as stage I - have generally good outlooks, but there are racial differences in a number of factors that affect how well they do. For the new study, the researchers used a U.S. database to analyze nearly 450,000 invasive breast cancers diagnosed between 2004 and 2011. Overall, about 51% of white non-Hispanic women in the sample were diagnosed with early-stage cancers, which are thought to have the best prognosis if properly treated. Only about 37% of black women were diagnosed with early cancer, making them less likely to have that good prognosis. The researchers also found that about 6% of black women were predicted to die within seven years after their breast cancer diagnosis, compared to about 3% of white women. Black women were also more likely to die from small tumors, compared to white women. Differences still remained after the researchers excluded women with a more aggressive form of breast cancer known as triple-negative, which is known to be more common among black women. After accounting for various factors that are known to affect breast cancer outcomes - including income - the differences in outcomes persisted, which suggests to the researchers that other biological reasons - such as the aggressiveness of the tumors, for example - were behind the disparities. They don’t believe that a lack of screening among black women leads to a later diagnosis of cancer, because the relationship is even seen in age groups that don’t normally receive mammograms. “We do know that breast cancers in African American women do tend to be more aggressive than breast cancer in white women,” said Dr. Nancy Keating, a cancer researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who was not involved with the new study. “This - as well as other studies - supports this.”

This discovery - namely, that colorectal cancers appear different on a molecular level in African Americans - offers new hope for these patients. With this groundbreaking knowledge, scientists now will seek to develop treatments that target the distinct nature of the disease in African Americans - and, they hope, begin to reduce the devastation disproportionately wrought on this population. The findings only became possible because of technological advances in gene sequencing and computational analysis. The study that revealed this invaluable information ultimately involved review of 1.5 billion bits of data. "This milestone study builds on our previous genetic research on colorectal cancer," said Sanford Markowitz, MD, PhD, corresponding author on the study, and principal investigator of the $11.3 million federal gastrointestinal cancers research program (GI SPORE) that includes this project. The disparity between colorectal cancer rates in African Americans and other groups has long existed; the most recent federal statistics, for example, put age-adjusted incidence at 46.8 cases for every 100,000 African Americans, and 38.1 cases for every 100,000 white Americans. Yet scientists have struggled to determine what factors - biological, economic, environmental, or others - account for this disparity. "These advancements underscore the importance of university-based research," said Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge, former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and representative of the 11th district, which includes Case Western Reserve and UH Case Medical Center. "I am proud that researchers from Northeast Ohio are taking meaningful steps toward identifying pathways to block a devastating disease that disproportionately affects members of the African American community." From the very start, Markowitz and his colleagues believed that the answer to this question would be found through genetic analysis. "Identifying gene mutations has been the basis of all the new drugs that have been developed to treat cancer in the last decade," Markowitz said. "Many of the new cancer drugs on the market today were developed to target specific genes in which mutations were discovered to cause specific cancers." One of the lead researchers on the project was senior author Joseph E. Willis, MD, associate professor of pathology, Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, director of tissue management, Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Vice Chair of Pathology for Clinical Affairs at UH Case Medical Center. "We wondered if colon cancer is the same disease molecularly in African Americans individuals as it is in Caucasian individuals. Or could colon cancer be the same disease behaving differently in one population compared to another," he said. "This study gave us our answer. Colon cancer in African American patients is a different disease molecularly." The scientists made their discovery by using DNA sequencing to compare 103 colorectal cancer samples from African American patients with 129 colorectal cancer samples from white patients, all of whom had received care at UH Case Medical Center in Cleveland. The scientists examined 50 million bits of data from 20,000 genes in every cancer. From these extensive data, investigators first uncovered 20 new gene mutations in the colorectal cancers of African Americans that never before had been seen in patients with this disease. Investigators then confirmed that 15 of these gene mutations preferentially affected the African American patients. Just over 40% of cancers in African Americans carried mutations in one or more these genes. In addition, the scientists found that these mutations were 3.3-fold more common in African American cancers than in colorectal cancer tissues from whites. The investigators particularly zeroed in on mutations in 2 of these 15 genes, EPHA6 and FLCN, detected exclusively in African American patients. EPHA6 belongs to a family of proteins linked to causing cancer; this study marks the first time this gene has been implicated in colorectal cancer. In addition, individuals born with FLCN mutations are known to be susceptible to certain cancers. EPHA6 gene mutations were detected in 5.8% of colorectal cancers of African American patients, and FLCN gene were in 2.91%. "This is the first study to perform a comprehensive gene mutation characterization and comparison of these colorectal cancer tumors in two ethnicities - African American and Caucasian," said lead author Kishore Guda, DVM, PhD, assistant professor, General Medical Sciences (Oncology), Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. "Our next step will be to collaborate with other centers in investigating African American populations in different regions of the United States to determine whether they also share the unique gene signature found in the Cleveland African American community." In addition, these investigators want to delve into exactly how these mutations act and what they do, including whether these gene mutations make colon cancer act more aggressively.

An investigation by Kings College London and the BBC World Service found that in a single month, November 2014, 5042 people were killed by jihadists in 664 separate attacks across 14 countries. That is one death every eight minutes. Recently, the Islamist group Boko Haram (which translates as "Western education is forbidden") is believed to have murdered up to 2000 people in Nigeria. In the 35 years since the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, at least a million people have been killed in tens of thousands of jihad attacks, religious civil wars or wars between predominantly Muslim countries. In France, Muslims represent 60% of the prison population. Two of the three jihad killers in Paris had served time in prison. In Australia, Muslims are statistically more likely to engage in jihad than to enlist in the Australian Defense Forces. Islam does not make countries better, it makes them worse.

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Karim al-Banna, a 21-year-old whose own father testified against him, was jailed by a court in the Nile Delta province of Baheira. "He was handed down a three-year prison sentence, and if he pays a bail of 1,000 Egyptian pounds ($140 or 117 euros) the sentence can be suspended until a verdict is issued by an appeals court," Abdel Nabi said, adding that an appeal was to be heard on March 9, 2015. Abdel Nabi said that his client's father had testified against his son, charging that he "was embracing extremist ideas against Islam". Banna's name had appeared in a list of known atheists in a local daily after which his neighbors harassed him, said Ishaq Ibrahim, a researcher on religion and beliefs at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. When Banna went to file a complaint against them at a police station, he was accused of insulting Islam and arrested, said Ibrahim, who has been tracking Banna's case. Banna has been in custody since November 2014. In December 2012, a 27-year-old blogger, Alber Saber, was sentenced to three years in jail on charges of blasphemy. And in June 2014, a Coptic Christian man was sentenced to six years in jail for insulting Islam. The authorities have stepped up measures, including organizing workshops, to counter atheism.

India's top crime fighting agency registered a case against Gurmeet Ram Rahim - known as the "guru in bling" for his penchant for garish clothes and jewellery - over the operations at his ashram. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said that Rahim is being investigated for criminal intimidation and causing grievous bodily harm after an alleged 400 castrations were carried out. The guru, who heads the Dera Sacha Sauda organisation based in Haryana state, is already facing trial for conspiracy over the murder of a journalist in 2002, as well as with claims of sexually exploiting female followers. The latest case was filed after one of his devotees, Hansraj Chauhan, lodged a complaint in court alleging that he was manipulated into having the painful operation at the ashram. Rahim stars in an action movie to be released soon called "MSG: Messenger of God" in which the guru fights criminals, sings songs and is shown dousing himself in water in slow motion after a rugby game. India has been rocked by numerous scandals involving popular godmen who are mostly Hindu ascetics claiming to possess mystical powers. In November 2014, police arrested Baba Rampal Maharaj after a long and violent siege at his ashram in Haryana when he refused to comply with court orders in a murder case.
In a bizarre case, devotees of a dead guru are fighting a court battle in Punjab state to preserve his body in a freezer, insisting that he is only meditating.

With total employment running at about 147 million, every one percentage point gain in the immigrant employment share translates to as many as 1.47 million fewer U.S.-born workers. From February 2009 - Obama’s first full month in office - to December 2014 the immigrant share of total employment rose from 14.97% to 16.91% - a gain of 1.94 percentage points. This implies that as many as 2.85 million (1.94 multiplied by 1.47 million) U.S.-born Americans may have lost jobs due to immigration. From January 2009 to December 2014, foreign-born employment rose by 3.286 million, or by 15.2%.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

African Americans have a 4-fold increased risk for chronic kidney disease compared with European Americans. Recent work from several research groups has shown that much of this risk is due to genetic variations in a gene called apolipoprotein L1 (APOL1), which creates a protein that is a component of HDL, or good cholesterol. These variants arose tens of thousands of years ago in sub-Saharan Africa, and so are present in individuals who have recent sub-Saharan African ancestry. Approximately 5 million African Americans carry APOL1 risk variants, placing them at increased risk for kidney disease. The investigators found that 72% of self-identified African Americans in the study had APOL1 risk variants.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

The illegitimacy rates are 66.2% for American Indians/Alaska Natives; 53.3% for Hispanics; 29.1% for non-Hispanic whites; and 17.2% for Asians/Pacific Islanders and less than half (46%) of U.S. kids younger than 18 years of age are living in a home with two married heterosexual parents in their first marriage.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Police have arrested five men, including two brothers. Authorities say that the young academic was staying in Kolkata when a man who speaks fluent Japanese lured her away by posing as a tour guide. He and other accomplices then held her in a village near Bodh Gaya, a popular destination because of its Buddhist pilgrimage center, and repeatedly raped her. The men have been charged with gang rape, wrongful confinement, kidnapping, molestation, and criminal conspiracy.

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Whites were 5% of all suspects shot by the police in 2013 though they committed only 2% of New York City’s shootings — a 250% disparity. Blacks were 75% of criminal shooters and 79% of police shooting victims — virtual parity.

The County Sheriff's Office has charged 23-year-old Christian Jose Gomez of 1924 Sheffield Court in Oldsmar with first-degree murder. Investigators responded to the home on 12/31/2014 at 7:24 p.m. where they found the decapitated body of the victim, who deputies say is Gomez's mother, 48-year-old Maria Suarez-Cassagne. According to Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, Gomez hit his mother over the head with an axe, then cut her head off her in the garage and dragged the body to the garbage outside the home. The Sheriff says that Gomez had been planning his mother's murder for two days. According to investigators, Gomez was angry over his mother "nagging" to put boxes away in the attic. Gualtieri says that Gomez admitted he put his mother's head in a garbage can outside the home and then attempted to put her body in the garbage, as well, but it was too heavy. Cassagne's body was found by her older son, Gomez's 26-year-old brother, Mario Gomez. The brother was home at the time of the crime, but thought that the noises he heard was Gomez putting the boxes away. "He went to the garage, he found an axe laying on the floor," said Gualtieri. "He found a blood trail and he followed that outside to the side of the house and when he went outside, he found his mother laying there on the ground next to a trash can, and unfortunately his mother had been decapitated, so he immediately called the sheriff's office." Gomez had left the home by the time deputies arrived, but was found riding his bike just several blocks away a short time later. A brief chase ensued and Gomez was taken into custody. Sheriff Gualtieri confirms that Gomez was diagnosed with schizophrenia and prescribed medications, but it's unclear if he was taking them. Gomez also told deputies that he was also angry at his mother because he felt that she favored his brother more than him. Gomez has prior arrests in Pinellas County for loitering and prowling, resisting officer without violence, and disorderly conduct.